Wayne Rooney eased the pressure on Louis van Gaal as the Manchester United captain’s superb backheeled strike secured a hard-fought 2-1 win over Swansea City on Saturday.
Rooney’s 77th-minute moment of magic took him ahead of Denis Law to become the second-highest goalscorer in United’s history and he is now also the second-highest scorer in the Premier League era with 188 goals.
But even more significantly the England forward’s first league goal since October gave United their first win in nine matches and moved them up to fifth place.
It was a badly needed three points for United manager Van Gaal, who had been forced to deny he was considering quitting over Christmas.
Four defeats and two draws in December had contributed to a barren run which had seen United go out of the Champions League and slip out of the Premier League’s top four during the club’s worst run since 1990.
They could ill-afford another setback and Anthony Martial headed United in front as they scored only their 11th goal in 15 games.
United’s goal and points tally had been their lowest ever in the first half of a Premier League season and when Gylfi Sigurdsson headed Swansea level with 20 minutes to go another winless afternoon threatened.
But Van Gaal’s men managed to find the route to goal once more thanks to Rooney’s third league goal of the season as relief flooded around Old Trafford.
As they had done against Chelsea in their previous home stalemate, United tried to show more attacking intent from the start with Van Gaal employing a three-man defence and Ashley Young and Anthony Martial as wing-backs in a bid to set up a first home win since November.
Young helped provided an attacking threat but with only one out-and-out striker in Rooney, United still found genuine chances hard to come by before halftime.
Morgan Schneiderlin made a rare foray forward inside the first minute to get in a shot which was blocked by Federico Fernandez, but it was another 20 minutes before United had another sight of goal as Rooney fired into the side-netting.
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